The Burmese military’s systematic human rights abuses against their own population have pushed close to 1 million Rohingya Muslims into massive refugee camps at the Bangladesh border. Despite this abominable record, the Burmese regime reigns unchecked, free to continue terrorizing innocent people as much as it likes. This is why the United States must act now and re-impose comprehensive sanctions to apply the economic pressure that will bring this rogue regime to the bargaining table and force them to acknowledge their crimes.
In August 2017, Burmese security forces were unleashed to rampage, unchecked, through Rakhine State in western Burma. Their numerous, unconscionable crimes against the region’s native, mostly defenseless Rohingya population are now undeniable. The evidence for them has been unearthed in the mass graves of innocent families, seen in the babies born to mothers systematically raped by the Burmese army, and testified to in countless stories from refugee survivors. It is also there for all to see in the sprawling refugee camps across the border in Bangladesh, where over a million people languish in stateless limbo.
Since then, the Myanmar military has continued to carry out a savage campaign of violence and expulsion against its own population. Most recently it has turned its guns on the Christian people of Kachin State. The army appears to be stepping up its offensive, with the apparent intention of repeating the successful results of its genocidal campaign against the Rohingya against the Christian minority in Kachin. As a result of such persecution, approximately 400,000 Kachin Christians have fled the country since 2003. Villages are being bombed and burnt, suffering a similar fate as the Rohingya community in Rakhine state. Over 200,000 Kachin refugees are now spread across Thailand, Malaysia, and the U.S., with 160,000 in the U.S. alone. This is happening every day, with additional reports of atrocities committed by the military against civilian, minority targets surfacing daily.
The human rights advocacy group Fortify Rights has been carrying out some of the most thorough documentation of these crimes. Their brand new report exposes, in detail, the premeditated nature of the genocidal campaign against the Rohingya. While the Burmese military continues to deny any such systematic or planned campaigns against its minority populations, these denials can no longer be taken seriously in the face of such overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Despite these facts, and that the record of their unspeakable atrocities is obviously there for all to see in the clear light of day, the current government of Burma denies all wrongdoing, even that its army has attacked civilian targets. Such an Orwellian display of contempt for the truth would put the most duplicitous totalitarian regimes to shame.
This is an interfaith crisis because it concerns members of Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and other religious traditions who make up the increasingly threatened minorities among Burma’s majority Buddhist population. The Burmese military works hand in hand with widely influential, fundamentalist monks to advance the campaign of genocide against the country’s minorities. The Rohingya Muslims have borne the greatest brunt of this campaign in recent years, but the military regime is growing bolder in its transgressions, and extremist monks are growing more audacious in their pogroms. Some leading monks have even gone so far as to bless the military’s actions, excusing their crimes because they are focused on the alleged enemies of Buddhism.
The convergence of military interests and extremist Buddhist ideology has created an almost unstoppable juggernaut of hateful violence in Burma. For many years the world has stood and watched the horror that is taking place there. It is past time for it to be brought to an end. It is time to remind the world that, in the immortal words of Dr. King, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
We at the Faith Coalition to Stop Genocide in Burma respectfully request that the government of the United States reinstate full economic sanctions against Burma. Specifically, we ask that the Executive Orders of Sept. 14, Sept. 28, and Oct. 7, 2016, and the Presidential Determination of Dec. 2, 2016, issued by President Barack Obama be rescinded. These represent grievous errors that must be corrected.
Comprehensive sanctions formerly had a major impact on sensitive sectors in the Burmese economy, including the largely military-owned jewel trade, to such a degree that they helped prompt democratic elections in 2015-2016. The sanctions targeted Burmese imports and financial institutions, and stemmed the flow of U.S. investment. They also sapped key business concerns tied to the Ministry of Defense, one of the main drivers of the country’s dismal human rights record.
Beginning in 2012, these sanctions began to be rolled back in anticipation of basic democratic reforms in the country. The idea at the time was that repealing these sanctions would encourage further democratic reform by opening up the country to global trade. Clearly, this has been a grievous error. The repeal of these sanctions between 2012 and 2016 meant the military and government no longer had an incentive to follow international law or deepen democratization. The results are now here for all to see. It seems safe to conclude that the stick of sanctions, rather than the carrot of free trade, is the required approach to this case. Re-imposing full sanctions, exempting food and medicine, is the best tool available for compelling the Burmese government and military to recognize human rights, and accept a U.N.-brokered repatriation process for the Rohingya.
In the face of the apparent inability of the international community to act, the United States must step in with policies that will compel cooperation and end these crimes against humanity. Such policies are available in the form of a return to a full regime of economic sanctions against Myanmar. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest such sanctions would dramatically transform the situation for the better.
No American government should ever reward brutal, dictatorial governments that engage in genocide. The time to act is now. Further delay will mean more innocent deaths, more women raped, babies murdered, and whole communities wiped from the face of the Earth.
